In fact, the real political drama isn’t being played out in Jinan. It’s back here in Beijing, where there’s clearly reluctance within the Chinese leadership to use the trial to see where Bo and the Communist Party went wrong.

Apart from a stinging editorial back in July on the heels on the official announcement of his trial, the Party media has been largely quiet about what Bo did and why. The trial wasn’t mentioned in Thursday night’s major TV news broadcast and received only cursory attention inside Friday’s People Daily.

Beijing warned officials in Bo’s former base of Chongqing to not allow too much unguided public discussion during the trial. And while domestic news coverage became heavier as the first trial session proceeded, many traditional media outlets offered a simple recounting of the case, saying “the courtroom proceedings were in perfect order.”

There are good reasons for that caginess and control.

Part of the motivation is clear discomfiture on the part of Chinese leaders.

On balance, Bo’s ascent was a calamity for the Communist Party. Bo not only mobilized leftists in China who thought that the country had strayed from socialism. In doing so, he became a political alternative to then-Party leader Hu Jintao and his appointed successor, Xi Jinping. Bo’s popularity was largely made possible by talking revolution to the discontented in China, while nearly everyone in Beijing stuck to debating about reform.

It wasn’t Bo’s corruption that angered Hu and his allies as much as Bo’s independence.

And that’s a very sensitive issue. An editorial in the authoritative People’s Daily back on July 25 noted that a major lesson for cadres about Bo’s rise and fall was “the need to adhere and abide by central-level decisions.” But that commentary, after being accessible for nearly a month, was suddenly removed from major news sites after the first day of the trial—a clear signal to cadres that Bo’s trial is about Bo’s corruption, not about how he got away with such practices while some in Beijing kept their eyes wide shut.

There’s also little upside for Xi and his comrades to try to take credit for Bo Xilai finally being placed on formal trial.

The political takedown of Bo was the triumph of the previous leadership of Hu Jintao. If Xi and his allies want to critique Hu’s strategy of governance as a way to appeal to cadres and citizens who want change, calling attention to Bo’s dismissal by Hu isn’t the way to go about it. That approach also risks raising the issue of why Xi went to Chongqing in 2010 when Bo was in charge — a trip that seemed to some at the time to be an expression of support for what Bo was up to there.

So, Bo’s trial is being portrayed by Party media as an indictment of the man, not the system that let him get away with so much for so long.

And there’s another reason for Bo’s trial not being trumpeted in the Party media: Xi and his supporters think it’s time to move on.

That sentiment was apparent in Xi’s major speech at a national conference on ideology and propaganda that concluded at the start of this week.

At that conference, Xi called for unity and consensus in the Party, and for officials—“particularly senior officials”—to “adopt a firm political position and adhere to the correct political orientation and strengthen the central government plans, its analysis of the situation, as well as significant judgments made” on issues of the day. “Party members,” Xi insisted, “should take a clear stand on the Party’s principles.”

There was nothing about law or justice or legal processes in this major speech– which took place on the very eve of the Bo Xilai trial. Instead, Xi was imploring cadres not to get sidetracked–to get back to the business of supporting Beijing, and find common ground to move forward. Revisiting and revising aren’t part of Xi’s reform.

That Xi feels the need to remind cadres of that fact means that some—including senior officials–are still not reading from the script that he’s composed. But Xi and his supporters are determined to fix that by accelerating Party reforms, pushing cadres to be far more daring and holding out the possibility that their selection may soon to be tied to some form of public input.

That Bo Xilai seems intent on defending himself at his trial does have the hint of high drama. But it’s Xi who’s directing reforms of the Party, and not Bo. That’s the reality of contemporary Chinese politics—and where the political spotlight soon will rightfully belong.

Russell Leigh Moses is the Dean of Academics and Faculty at The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies. He is writing a book on the changing role of power in the Chinese political system.

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